Customer Reviews

War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

As a planning student, I read this book to get a different view from the mainstream on how to meet the housing demands of the world's growing population. While the book is well researched, I generally found his arguments to be weak and/or flawed on many levels. The author advocates unending urban sprawl, while it is easy to demonstrate that unending sprawl is socially, economically and environmentally unsustainable. He also tries to develop an unhelpful fear campaign about higher density living. This book deserves to go in the recycle bin.

This book is a must read for anyone concerned about regulatory takings, private property rights, and social engineering. Mr. Cox provides hard data to answer the "but it looks pretty" arguments that plague current planning and zoning philosophy. I discovered his book while looking for answers after a proposed "Smart Growth" zoning ordinance in my Township threated my property thru regulatory takings. Mr. Cox's focus is on the true costs and economic realities too often ignored when our elected officials blindly follow the latest fads. The text is information heavy but definately worth the time and energy. It's like a crash corse in history, economics, social engineering, as it pertains to planning and zoning. This book will make you proud of where we come from and concerned about where we are going.

Cox isn't necessarily crazy, but he is most certainly stuck in the thinking of the 1950s. While it might be nice if we could all have an acre and a McMansion, it's just not possible given our limited resources. How is he going to control population growth? How is he going to provide food for all these McMansions if we are putting houses over agricultural land?

And most importantly, what of the environmental toll these McMansions take? How do all these people get to work every day? And where do we get the oil for that.

Cox's tome is a product of the thinking of yesteryear, and should probably be left there.

Unlike the one star reviewers, I've actually read the book - the author addresses the so-called concerns of these "reviewers".

Get the book and read it for yourself, don't blindly follow the eco-party line of the one-star reviewers of this book. Freedom leads to greater prosperity which leads to a better environment - period. "Sprawl" just means the neo-utopian planners don't get to tell us where to live. "Sprawl" means low income housing that people actually want to live in instead of the government created low-income crack house neighborhoods no one wants to live in.

My NIMBY neighbors shot down a housing development near where I live. Their desire for a nice view of open space near their home is more important than the private property rights of the owners of that open space who want to develop it, and more important than the young couple who work two jobs each in the service sector, probably cleaning the offices and/or houses of those who just denied them a home in the town where they work. Their commute, btw,is on a dangerous one-lane (in each direction, of course), high-traffic road that can't be widened because of eco-fanatics that require endless multi-million dollar enviro studies and unions that require wages, vacations, and pensions none of us will ever see in the private sector for similar jobs/skills.

It is not the American dream these proponents of central planning (didn't they get the memo: socialism failed) are crushing, but the universal dream of freedom. The freedom of a low-income family to afford a decent house in a safe neighborhood. They should be ashamed of themselves and we should not fall for their techno-eco-babble justifications for restricting freedom.

Cuts through all the BS surrounding new-urbanism and looks at the hard facts concerning subarnization. The conclusion: the car ain't so bad after all...